


we might be dead by tomorrow

by tarafying



Category: The End Of The Fucking World (TV), Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: It's depressing, Keith and Shiro are Siblings, M/M, but they live in new york cause idk shit about england, keith is james and lance is alyssa, klance teotfw au, teotfw spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-03-22 09:11:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13760901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarafying/pseuds/tarafying
Summary: Keith, a self-diagnosed psychopath, singles out new kid Lance as his first victim. Things don't end up going as planned.





	1. Chapter 1

Keith was seventeen and deadly quiet.

He never said much. The words that passed his lips were few and far between, and though he always spoke when spoken to, he had given such an impression as to discourage people from even trying to engage him. It was better that way—better that he kept his outside silent, better that he conceal the raging firestorm inside his mind.

He stepped onto his skateboard and pushed off down the sidewalk. It was early autumn, and gloomy, but passively; there was no telltale hint of cold in the air to remind him of the promise of winter. Keith lived in the Hudson River Valley, a slim band of desolate suburbia between New York City and Albany. Living there was all right, he supposed. He’d never had the chance to live anywhere else.

Years ago, in the 19th Century, there had been an art revival around the Hudson River. Painters like Thomas Cole and Frederick Edwin Church had celebrated the area’s lush woods and iconic waterway, producing dozens of pieces you could find in Keith’s AP U.S. History textbook. He skated by the river now, down a long stretch of sidewalk that ran parallel to it’s slate-gray surface. Keith had never understood the supposed resemblance between what he saw in the paintings and the monochrome vista in front of him. There was a detachment, he supposed, between what an artist saw and what was really there. A separation. In the space between the two, quiet.

When Keith was eight, he realized he didn’t have a sense of humor. His brother Shiro, who had come back from his service in the Middle East a completely different person, made endless jokes and puns and plays on words. They never made Keith laugh. He just wanted to punch Shiro in his perfect teeth.

When Keith was nine, Shiro brought home a deep-fryer he’d found in a thrift store. When Shiro left the room, Keith had plunged his hand into the boiling oil. He’d wanted to feel something. Anything. Keith had grimaced, and screamed, and his left hand bore the mottled scars and welts to prove it, but there was still that same detachment. A stretch of silent stillness between what he was supposed to feel and what he did.

When he was fifteen, Keith had trapped the neighbor’s cat and taken it far out into the woods. He slit its throat with his hunting knife and buried the body. He’d killed several animals since then, a couple birds, a pet fish; nothing that would ever arouse suspicion among the residents of his cul-de-sac. 

Keith was pretty sure he was a psychopath.

His skateboard caught in the gap between one square of sidewalk and the next, and he nearly stumbled as he hastily regained his balance. It was time for school again, which meant noise and work and crowds, but Keith wasn’t as reluctant to return this year, because school also meant people, and people meant targets, and the moral of the story was that Keith was tired of killing cats. He had slid the sheath of his hunting knife into his boot this morning, and felt a strange shiver of anticipation. He was going to kill someone. 

Not anyone, though. It had to be the right person, and the right time. Keith had done his research. He knew exactly where and when to carry out the killing in order to obtain the most convenient results. As he stepped off his skateboard and up the steps of the school building, his mind wandered to what exactly it would feel like. Would the blood smell like copper, like the way books had described it? Would the human struggle? Would they cry?

It made for pleasant daydreams. School was an afterthought, and soon Keith sat at his corner table in the lunchroom with barely any recollection of how or when he’d gotten there. He got out the sandwich he’d made for himself, took a bite, and surveyed the lunchroom’s occupants. The right person was in here somewhere, just waiting to be found. His eyes skipped from one table and clique to another. Jocks were too strong; Keith was shorter and had good stamina but no brute strength. Girls were impossible; they thought he was creepy, and he’d never get close enough to any of them to slip a knife between their ribs. Nerds were paranoid, and theater kids were too noisy. So who did that leave?

Keith was just about to scan the cafeteria for a second time when he saw someone walking towards him. No, not walking—storming. The boy was angry, his swimmer’s shoulders thrown back in defiance as he stalked away from a table of laughing guys. And sure enough, he was headed straight towards Keith.

Keith had never seen the student before. He was Latino, tall and lanky, with a swagger that registered even to Keith’s untrained eye. He was wearing a blue shirt and a baggy dark green jacket with a gray hood that looked like it had been washed one too many times. 

The boy said something; Keith didn’t hear it. He slid his headphones off his ears and let the music fade. “What?”

“I said I’ve seen you skating,” said the boy, looking down at Keith with an inscrutable expression. Keith didn’t reply.

“You sort of suck at it,” the boy said. 

“Fuck off,” said Keith.

The boy did not fuck off. The boy sat down across from Keith and said, “I’m Lance. I’m new. This school fucking sucks.”

Keith looked up. Lance was much taller than he was. He had brown skin and blue eyes. He was wearing the kind of earrings that stretched a gaping hole into your earlobe, and he was staring expectantly at Keith.

On the outside, Keith was quiet. On the inside, the fires of anticipation reached a flaming height. Lance was new. Lance was sitting across from him. Lance was the perfect target.

And Keith was going to kill him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning: f slur, homophobia

Keith was the only goddamn person in this school that Lance had met so far who didn’t make him want to slit his throat. The enthusiasm Lance had had that morning, his sense of optimism, his hope that the new school would be bearable and even nice…all gone. Roosevelt High was an old WPA building that clearly hadn’t seen any renovations since the 1930s. The teachers were boring, and the students were worse—they all blended together in a formless gray blob of Jansport backpacks and sweatpants and Juul pods hastily tucked into pockets. 

A few guys had been friendly to Lance when he came in, clearly having sized him up and decided that he was better off on their side. When Lance said he was from Queens, they responded with a few indifferent nods, but Lance could see the clear respect he’d earned in the straightening of their shoulders. 

Lance didn’t mind being friends with dudebros, and he was ready to find his place in the school, but things at the guys’ lunch table quickly went sour. One of the guys, Ethan, started going on about some dude he’d seen down at the skatepark by the river the past weekend.

“He’s like, such a fag,” Ethan said. Lance’s head shot up.

The other boys guffawed in approval. One of them, named Steve, craned his neck to peer over Lance’s head towards the back of the cafeteria. “I see him now, man! Dude, he’s, like, staring right at us!”

“Creeep,” Ethan drawled. He clapped Lance on the shoulder. “Advice, dude. Stay the fuck away from Keith. Fag’s been doing weird shit since fifth grade.”

Lance could feel his face heating up. His hand clenched around the clear, malleable plastic of his water bottle, and he stood up, slinging his backpack over a shoulder. “Sorry guys, I gotta go.”

Steve’s eyes narrowed. “Hey, what?”

Lance shook his head, turning away and untangling his legs from the built-in seat of the table. “Talk to you later.” He nearly stumbled in his haste to get away from the cluster of guys, staring down as blood rushed to his face and ears. He felt an insatiable desire to pull the hood of his jacket over his head.

He wove his way through the seemingly endless tables of the cafeteria. Lance bit his lip, trying to tell himself that it wasn’t the guys’ fault for throwing slurs around like footballs. After all, Lance didn’t look gay. He was bi, anyway, and the only people who knew that were his mom and his best friend Hunk back in Queens. So the casual homophobia shouldn’t have surprised him—this was a school full of privileged white people, anyway, the kids of lawyers and businesspeople who commuted from the city and drove polished BMWs around their impeccably groomed cul-de-sacs. 

But Lance had still had a little bit of hope that things wouldn’t be so bad here. That he’d be able to find his people. Things were bad enough, what with his dad still ignoring emails and all his friends an expensive, three-hour train ride away. Things were more than bad. They fucking sucked.

A couple months ago, Lance’s mom had married Dave after being divorced from Lance’s dad for six or seven years. Dave convinced Lance’s mom to move upstate and out of the city, into the small town where Dave’s law firm was based. “It will be like a fresh start,” he’d promised. 

Of course, Dave’s fresh start didn’t include any of the things Lance attached any value to. Lance couldn’t stand Dave. He wore overly pressed shirts and ugly shoes. He claimed to love and appreciate the McClains’ Cuban heritage, but shot Lance a look every time he spoke Spanish in the house.

“We don’t want to confuse the baby,” Dave would say, resting a hand on Lance’s mother’s pregnant stomach. Lance had wanted to scream. It was a fetus, not a baby, and even if Lance’s unborn sibling was listening, was there anything wrong about being bilingual? Lance wasn’t stupid. He knew Dave hated him in part because Lance had inherited his father’s darker skin and Queens accent. 

And now he was stuck in this school, where nearly every student was a textbook definition of straight white person, where gay was treated strictly as an insult and Lance would have to spend a year smiling along with their disgusting jokes. He looked up suddenly; he’d reached the door of the cafeteria, and he realized he’d have to find somewhere else to sit if he didn’t want to wait out the rest of the lunch period in the janitor’s closet. 

Lance’s eyes scanned the lunchroom. His gaze passed over table after table, landing finally in the back corner, where a lone boy sat hunched over and glaring as he chewed a sandwich. 

Lance’s eyes shot up. It was the guy Ethan and Steve had been making fun of—the skater they had called a fag. Lance did a final glance around the cafeteria. There were no other empty spots apparent. Oh well, Lance thought to himself. If I’m going to single myself out as a weirdo I might as well take it in stride. He’d squared his shoulders and strode over to the back of the room.

That had been a few hours ago, and now, as Lance trudged down the stairs in front of the school, the last bell of the day still ringing in his ears, he spotted the boy he’d sat with at lunch carrying a skateboard and heading down the main boulevard. Keith, Lance remembered, the name coming back to him quickly. Lance stopped at the bottom of the stairs and squinted. Was it Keith after all? The guy dropped his skateboard and pushed himself off. Yeah, Lance concluded, it was. He’d recognize Keith’s shaggy, dark mullet anywhere.

Lance broke into a fast walk, spurred into action by the memory of their conversation during lunch. It hadn’t been long. Keith hadn’t said much, except to ask where Lance was from and how old he was. Lance had tried to engage him in conversation a few times before giving up and spending the rest of the period sneaking looks at Keith. At his hair, black and wild, falling over his face in thick strands that somehow managed not to look unhygienic and just came across as really, really sexy. At his big gray eyes that had stared at Lance with unmistakable intensity. At his long, nimble fingers and strong hands, one of them mottled with scars Lance couldn’t guess the origin of.

Keith was weird, there was no doubt about it. But Lance didn’t mind weird—or rather he hated normal, and Keith wore this dark, staring expression that was so mysterious it made Lance want to shake him by the shoulders and yell, “Tell me all your secrets!” Which was why Lance didn’t hesitate as he followed Keith down the street away from the school.

In the slow chaos of pedestrians and afternoon traffic, Keith’s skateboard was no match for Lance’s long, loping strides and determination. He caught up with Keith a block away. “Hey, Keith.”

Keith jumped; the skateboard tilted frontways and Keith stumbled forward to catch it. It was tucked under his arm in a matter of seconds. He stared at Lance in silence.

Lance gave him a lopsided grin. “It’s Lance. From lunch, remember?”

Keith nodded. He turned back to the road and kept walking.

Lance shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and followed him. “Jeez, don’t act so happy to see me.”

“I am happy to see you,” Keith said, his expression so stony and impassive he might have been deadpanning.

Lance laughed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Ha, well, you could’ve told me otherwise. So what’s up?”

Keith was silent for a full block before he answered. They had stopped, waiting for a light to change to cross the street. “I’m heading back to my house. My brother’s out. Do you want to come with me?”

Then he looked up at Lance, and Lance almost jumped at the intensity in Keith’s face, at the hunger and yearning and anticipation. Lance raised his eyebrows. If Keith meant what it sounded like he was implying, then he was being pretty forward for the first day of school. But Lance liked weird, and he liked forward, and he especially liked the way Keith’s lips pressed together and how his jawline feathered as he waited for Lance’s reply.

“Yeah, sure,” Lance said, his smile widening. He felt the tips of his ears going red and ignored it. “I mean, like, if your parents are cool with it and stuff.”

“My parents aren’t around,” Keith said quickly. The light changed and they crossed the street. “I live with my older brother.”

Lance wanted to know what exactly Keith meant when he said his parents weren’t around, but he didn’t press the issue. Before long Keith had led him out of the town’s center and into a small development identical to the boring stretch of lawns and featureless houses that Lance had moved into. Keith stopped in front of an unremarkable ranch-style house with white shutters and a retro, white Volvo sitting in the driveway.

Lance nodded to the car, which gave off such a seventies vibe that it had to be a good 25 years old but still appeared to be in mint condition. “Nice ride.”

Keith dropped his skateboard and skated up the short stretch of driveway to the door. “It’s my brother Shiro’s.”

“Cool. You fix it up with him?”

Keith dug in the pocket of his jeans for a key and unlocked the door, looking strangely jittery. “No. I hate him.”

“Oh. I hate my stepdad.” Lance followed Keith into the house; it was neat, and well-kept, but lacked a certain sort of personality. It was also sort of cold. Lance shivered.

There was a line of framed photographs on top of the mantel in the living room. Lance walked over and looked at one, seeing a picture of two grinning boys. They were five and eight, maybe, or around that range, and the younger one had Keith’s delicate bone structure and long, shaggy hair. Lance stared at the photo, trying to connect the picture of the smiling, furiously happy kid on the mantel with the endlessly staring teenager a few feet away from him. It was difficult.

Keith took a step so he was standing next to Lance. He kept reaching down to fidget with his boot, as if tucking the hem of his pants in again and again. He stared at Lance. “You’re gay, aren’t you,” he said.

Lance’s eyebrows shot up. “Uh, I’m bisexual, actually.” The words popped out before Lance remembered that he was technically still in the closet. 

Keith just nodded. “Okay.” He started making his way towards the kitchen.

“Hey, wait,” Lance said, following him. “How did you know?”

Keith turned, his blue-gray gaze boring into Lance like rays of ultraviolet light. “Those guys you were sitting with,” he said. “Ethan and Steve and all of them. They’re always making gay jokes, and when you stood up you looked mad. Embarrassed.”

“God.” Lance shook his head. “I didn’t think my facial expressions were that obvious.”

The barest trace of a smile tugged on the corners of Keith’s mouth. “Also, you have gauges,” he said. “I’ve never seen a straight guy with those.”

Lance laughed a little and touched the holes in his ears; they were smaller than half a centimeter in diameter, and he had no wish to stretch them any further. “Good guess,” he said. Lance shifted from foot to foot, suddenly sweaty even though the house was freezing. “And, uh…I mean, what do you think of Ethan and Steve and those guys?”

Keith’s expression was fierce and full of wanting. “If I was like them, I wouldn’t have invited you back here, would I?”

When Keith kissed him, his lips were clammy and a little stiff, like he didn’t know what he was doing, but Lance was happy to do all the work in this instance. He buried his hands in Keith’s long black hair, leaning into the kiss without hesitation.

As they parted, Keith’s face was inscrutable, but his eyes held the same fierce intensity as they had before. This is the kind of guy I could fall in love with, Lance thought, and maybe moving here wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey sorry i haven't updated. junior year happened. anyway kudos comments bookmarks are appreciated :) lance has no idea what he's getting into hahaha

**Author's Note:**

> sorry it's short i'll update soon


End file.
